Smart Islands Declaration
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Smart Islands Declaration New pathways for European Islands to create smart, inclusive and thriving island societies for an innovative and sustainable Europe Forward Who we are We are European island local and regional authorities and actors representing our islands with the goal to promote the Smart Islands Initiative. The Smart Islands Initiative is a bottom-up effort spearheaded by island authorities and communities that communicates the need to tap the significant, yet largely unexploited potential of islands to function as laboratories for technological, social, environmental, economic and political innovation. The Smart Islands Initiative builds on years of collaboration between European islands and seeks to demonstrate that islands can host pilot projects and produce knowledge on smart and efficient resource and infrastructure management, which may be then transferred in mountainous, rural and generally geographically isolated areas but also scaled-up in big cities of continental Europe and beyond. The Smart Islands Initiative is inspired by the European Commission’s Smart Cities and Communities initiative, yet it goes one step further by extending the synergies beyond energy, transport and ICT to also include water and waste, directly addressing circularity in the economy. This holistic approach derives from insularity, the condition that forces island authorities to focus on how to ensure the optimal use and management of their resources and infrastructures, very often within island boundaries, in order to support sustainable and equitable economic development that fully taps into islands’ potential (geography, natural and human resources, products). Ultimately the Smart Islands Initiative advocates in favor of a place-based, transformative development agenda that makes the most out of islands’ competitive advantages, generates local growth and prosperity and contributes to EU policy goals in the fields of energy, climate mitigation and adaptation, innovation, circular economy, transport and mobility, blue growth, and the digital agenda. Against this backdrop, we think it is of utmost importance that all stakeholders of the Quadruple Helix, namely the public and private sector, academia and civil society join forces and become delivery agents of the Smart Islands Initiative. European and international policy context The Smart Islands Initiative is the culmination of a series of activities including concrete financing opportunities for islands to promote sustainable energy planning and mature sustainable projects locally (ISLEPACT; SMILEGOV), European Parliament initiatives (2006/2106(INI); 2015/3014 (RSP)), highlighting the challenges as much as the potential of islands to usher into a low-carbon, sustainable development paradigm, establishment of European island networks (ISLENET) and clusters (SMILEGOV) and more. A key catalyst of islands’ collaboration is the Pact of Islands, a political initiative with 117 EU island signatories, similar to the Covenant of Mayors in terms of commitments, yet focusing more on islands’ intrinsic characteristics. A process of streamlining the Pact of Islands with the new Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy is currently taking place to ensure a harmonized and integrated approach to tackling climate change through mitigation and adaptation efforts and laying the foundations for sustainable and inclusive growth at local level in Europe. Lastly, the historic Paris Agreement places particular emphasis on the need to strengthen the role and capacity of local authorities to tackle climate change by reducing emissions, building resilience and establishing cooperation platforms at local, national and international levels. Put all these developments together, European islands are offered a unique opportunity to demonstrate worldwide their role and contribution to accelerating action towards a low-carbon, circular and sustainable model of development, one that respects the limits of island as much as global ecosystems and available natural resources. Islands in Europe European islands have been experimenting with new forms of sustainable living for years, by putting in place innovative governance schemes to become more socially inclusive, trying out different business models for the provision of new services, introducing cutting-edge technologies to optimize the use of resources and infrastructures, educating their population and raising visitors’ awareness around key sustainability issues. Through an often entrepreneurial discovery process, driven by the quest to respond to pressing, real-life challenges, islands have produced best practices on smart and sustainable local development, providing inspiration and motivation to other insular and mainland areas in Europe and globally. We consider islands to be living labs that can offer important lessons on multiple policy fronts, including energy, transport, circular economy, multi-level governance and ICT and for different geographies – cities and towns, rural and mountainous areas. This is due to the fact that islands themselves are faced with different challenges as a result of variations in their size, distance from the mainland, population density, legal status and level of fiscal and political devolution. Despite their differences though, islands are shaped by insularity, a structural, ever-present condition of geographic discontinuity with a series of implications including energy dependency – particularly on fossil fuels – high transportation costs, limited economic diversification, but also unique ecosystems, enhanced levels of social capital, strong sense of identity and belonging. We believe that this set of pluralistic characteristics is in fact conductive to the emergence of local development paradigms on islands that optimally combine environmental, social, economic and technological solutions underpinned by the premise of smart, integrated and inclusive natural resources and infrastructures management. We understand that to be able to capture islands’ potential to transform into smart and thriving economies, we will have to be creative and apply systems thinking in order to identify and realize synergies between a multitude of sectors: economy, society, sustainability, mobility, ICT, circular economy, governance. Even more so, we ought to do this in a socially inclusive way, ensuring the active engagement of our authorities, citizens, entrepreneurs and researchers. We are ready to take on this challenge and to this end we establish the Smart Islands Initiative. We, the representatives of European Islands Define a Smart Island as the insular territory that embarks on a climate resilient pathway, combining climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts, in order to create sustainable local economic development and a high quality of life for the local population by implementing smart and integrated solutions to the management of infrastructures, natural resources and the environment as a whole, supported by the use of ICT, all while promoting the use of innovative and socially inclusive governance and financing schemes. Conceive the Smart Islands Initiative as one that builds on islands’ experience to evolve as distinct ecosystems over time, striking a balance between the dynamics of their population, resource availability and economic activities. With this in mind, we commit to capitalize on our extensive experience in devising and implementing innovative and sustainable solutions at local level and become drivers and delivery agents of Europe’s transition into a low-carbon, inclusive and sustainable economy. We want to become smart, inclusive and thriving societies and to this end we will: 1. Take action to mitigate and adapt to climate change and build resilience at local level 2. Trigger the uptake of smart technologies to ensure the optimal management and use of our resources and infrastructures 3. Move away from fossil fuels by tapping our significant renewables and energy efficiency potential 4. Introduce sustainable island mobility including electric mobility 5. Reduce water scarcity by applying non-conventional and smart water resources management 6. Become zero-waste territories by moving to a circular economy 7. Preserve our distinctive natural and cultural capital 8. Diversify our economies by exploiting the intrinsic characteristics of our islands to create new and innovative jobs locally 9. Strengthen social inclusion, education and citizens’ empowerment 10. Encourage the shift towards alternative, yearlong, sustainable and responsible tourism, also inland, coastal and maritime Smart and Integrated Resources and Infrastructure Management Energy We will tap into our significant renewable energy sources including solar, wind, tidal, ocean, wave, and geothermal potential and lead CO2 emissions reduction efforts to become increasingly energy independent, minimizing fuel imports and subsequent costs and allowing the emergence of new business models favouring decentralized energy production and consumption and the rise of islanders as prosumers. We will increase the energy efficiency of our building stock (electricity, heating and cooling) and infrastructures (e.g. street lighting, pumping stations), also within protected historic districts, to reduce subsequent CO2 emissions, through the integration of innovative technologies and practices and the adoption of zero-cost actions by islanders and visitors, triggering a shift to more responsible energy consumption patterns and more resilient infrastructures overall.